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In the late 1960s and early 1970s, this community in the United States and Canada numbered less than 200,000. These citizens of Indian origin were farmers and entrepreneurs and had been around for a long time. Some came in the 1930s and 1940s to study, like the illustrious Partap Singh Kairon, the late chief minister of Punjab, whose studies at the University of Michigan were financed through his fruit-picking in Yuba City. Others were entrepreneurs who came via Hong Kong and the United Kingdom.
These immigrants were already well-established when the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was passed. Later immigration was liberalized, and the second wave of Indian immigrants, including the author, arrived.
The immigrants of the early 1970s were university graduates and were given F-1 visas to continue their studies in the United States. This “cream of the crop” group was determined to not only settle down in their new country but also to spread their roots down deep. They mostly went back to India to get married and then brought their new brides with them. These young brides were also university graduates with a greater determination to outperform the men, and they did.
The children of these marriages, born in America and Canada – who knew nothing of their parents’ country beyond the occasional visits – were even more determined to succeed. Like their parents, they knew that there was only one way to prosperity: hard work. This was a positive aspect of growing up for them.
But they were also culturally torn between what their parents and what their environment were telling them. In simple terms, they were “American Born Confused Desi” – desi being a name used for South Asian immigrants and their descendants – or ABCD.
Very early on, they learned the good habit of excelling in studies and stayed away from bad influences. They stayed away from bad habits like drugs, school gangs and late evening sojourns with members of the opposite sex. Parents were keen that they pick up a bit of their family’s religion and grow up to become professionals, and not just minor professionals but shining stars in whatever career they chose; therefore, the pressure at home to do well was great.
As the parents prospered, the children began to enjoy the benefits of their parents’ prosperity: a large house, multiple cars, holidays in the sun and visits to their home country. For the children, mixing with others of their own kind was not uncommon.
As the children went through elementary school, their prosperity was already established. They were supposed to do something outstanding. A lot of them qualified to attend gifted student classes. A few have since become household names. For a few years in a row, children of Indian parents won national spelling contests. A few took up their parents’ sports of badminton and golf. Even though they began developing an appreciation for members of the opposite sex, there was not much of a chance of dating, as parents kept a strict and watchful eye on them.
During their high school years, there was only one issue in their parents’ minds - how to make them doctors, lawyers or engineers. They took appropriate courses and set themselves up on the long journey to become high-end professionals. Their parents had high hopes, much higher than the children could imagine. They wished for their children to get into Harvard, Wharton, Mayo, Cal Tech, Berkeley and other Ivy League universities. Therefore, even more hard work was required to make the cut.
In the process, parents drove their kids crazy, but today the results are apparent. Despite the Indian community being small and spread across the four corners of North America, a greater percentage of children of Indian parentage study in top universities and graduate schools than any other ethnic group.
Socially, they ignored a few important things, for which they cannot be blamed. Their parents drove them up the wall with studies. So, important social etiquettes were never learned, with others being forgotten altogether. Very rarely will a young Indian man get up and have the guts to ask a young Indian woman across the hall to dance. And when he does, she will end up confused and blushing, waiting for her parent’s approving nod. Sadly, the two sexes rarely met socially.
Sports were another area in which neither parents nor their children were very good and therefore were not expected to excel in. One will rarely see a boy of Indian parentage flashing his sports medal, but there are always exceptions. However, this was generally not an important part of growing up. The best the parents could come up with were piano lessons. Dance school for girls also became common, but the first of these schools did not open until the mid-1980s or 1990s and, even then, there was an extreme shortage of dance teachers.
Everything was not as rosy as it may seem from this description; there were also a lot of exceptions. Growing up is never easy. I do not think our parents found it easy when we were growing up. I do not think our kids were enjoying all the pressure at home. Some will always rebel, and they did. The media, especially TV and the movies, played a major role, since they are the trendsetters. Whatever was good enough for the actors and actresses on the screen was deemed good enough for them.
And now, many Indian parents are busy looking into matrimonial issues for their children of marriageable age. The young men and women can find their own match, but again this requires certain social skills. In general, they are not up to the mark in starting a conversation with the opposite sex except to talk about studies or a movie they watched or where they attended university. It is very rare that admiring looks are offered. So the parents come into the picture, fixing up matches; otherwise, the matter at hand never seems to move ahead.
Overall, the portrait of the Indian second generation community in the United States and Canada presents a generation of young people that are carrying on their parents’ legacy of hard work and determination, becoming successful, contributing citizens in their communities, while at the same time navigating the line between two very different cultural landscapes, that of their Indian cultural background and that of the North American environment in which they grew up.
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(Hari Sud is a retired vice president of C-I-L Inc., a former investment strategies analyst and international relations manager. A graduate of Punjab University and the University of Missouri, he has lived in Canada for the past 34 years. ©Copyright Hari Sud.)
